


One Degree Apart

by boredomsMuse



Category: Five Feet Apart (2019)
Genre: F/M, M/M, and also i am hurt and needed this okay, because michael should have shown up in the actual movie, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 15:25:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19672147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredomsMuse/pseuds/boredomsMuse
Summary: Will is gone, Stella has new lungs, and Poe...Poe is dead.Stella is the only one mourning.





	One Degree Apart

**Author's Note:**

> What do you mean i just wrote a 'takes place like right after the movie' thing about Far from Home? I totally didn't do that, nop.

Stella’s rearranging her room when he knocks. The place is still a mess. Between the tests and her parents, she hasn’t had a chance to clean it up. Which made the perfect excuse to skip lunch in the cafeteria.

She doesn’t want to go back there. Doesn’t want to remember how happy Poe looked, cooking the last meal he’d even eat. She can’t handle that.

The knock comes again and Stella takes a deep breath and wipes her eyes. Happy face now, she tells herself, she has new lungs she should be happy. Nevermind that the love of her life has left. Nevermind that her best friend is dead.

“Come in.” Stella calls before she can get caught up. She expects a nurse or her parents, but the person who opens her door makes her freeze. 

“Hey.” Michael greets as he steps into the room.

“Hi.” Stella manages, blinking back the tears. “Um, did they…” She trails off, not sure she can finish that sentence. Poe is gone, she knows he’s gone, but maybe if she doesn’t say it aloud it doesn’t count.

It hadn’t worked that way for Abby.

“I know.” Michael doesn’t need her to finish. “They uh, they called me right after.”

“Then why are you here?” Stella asks, a little confused. 

“Well I was feeling pretty horrible, you know, completely destroyed my room.” Michael says, looking around. She hasn’t gotten very far into cleaning. “Then I thought, there’s probably only one person that knows what I’m going through right now. So I came to see you. How are you holding up?”

“I… I don’t know.” Stella admits, looking away and rubbing her eyes furiously. She’s not about to start crying. “I’m fine.” She quickly changes her answer. 

“I can see that.” Michael says, once more eyeing the room. They haven’t known each other long but Michael knows her through Poe, there’s no lying to him. “It’s okay if you aren’t okay Stella.” 

“No it isn’t.” Stella denies. “I mean I, I got lungs. An extra five years. And it’s not fair because it’s my fault he’s gone.” She doesn’t mean to sob, but she doesn’t mean to say that much either. 

“Did you invent CF?” Michael asks, confusing shocking her out of the growing pit of despair.

“What? No of course not, no one invented CF it doesn’t work like that.” She frowns.

“Exactly. Then how can this be your fault?” 

“Because I was taking risks and I dragged him with me.” She says. “If it wasn’t for that party he’d still be alive.”

“You don’t know that.” Michael says. “You can’t.”

“Maybe, but what if it was the party?” She asks. “What if it was my fault?”

“And what if it wasn’t?” Michael counters. “What if that was always going to be Poe’s last night, and you didn’t throw the party?”

“I…” Stella has nothing to say to that. Michael doesn’t notice, he’s too busy pulling out his phone and opening his last messages from Poe. 

“That party was one of the best nights of his life.” Michael as Stella looks at the texts and photos Poe had been sending. “I haven’t seen him this happy in months Stella. And I know you meeting that boy is the entire reason he started talking to me again. So don’t blame yourself for this, please.” Stella sits on the edge of the bed, looking through the messages. She can remember him typing these out last night, ridiculous smile on his face. 

“I miss him.” She finally manages. There’s a heart emote right at the bottom, the time stamp dating it to right before he died. Michael’s response is a heart of his own before he starts to panic and worry. 

“I know.” He says. “I miss him too.”

“He loved you.” Stella hands back Michael’s phone and for a moment he just stares at that heart. “It wasn’t just me calling him out. He really loved you, he didn’t want to let you go.”

“I know.” Michael says, rubbing away a few tears of his own. “He loved you too you know, you were his best friend.”

“I know.” Stella almost manages a smile, almost. “I never hugged him.” She mumbles after a minute. “That’s what I’d do if I could go back.”

“I’ve hugged him.” Michael’s words make her frown slightly. She knows Michael hugged Poe, she knows way too much detail about what they did together. “And I don’t have CF, I’m completely healthy right now.”

“What are you getting at?” Stella frowns deeper.

“You can hug me and it’d almost be like hugging him, since I’ve hugged him before. It’s only like, one degree of separation.” Michael says. It’s ridiculous logic but it sounds so much like something Poe would say that Stella manages a laugh. Or a sob, she’s not sure. 

The hug doesn’t last long, and Michael isn’t even the same build as Poe, but Stella shuts her eyes tight and pretends. She thinks of Poe’s slim shoulders, and the sound of his voice calling between their rooms. When she pulls away she doesn’t pretend she’s not crying. Michael doesn’t either.

“When my brother died, my sister and I stayed up all night telling stories about him.” He says after a moment. “It helped.”

“I don’t know if that’ll help me.” Stella says. When Abby died she avoided the topic of her sister like the plague. But then, that hadn’t really helped either.

“Humor me? No one else has the stories you do.” Michael says. Stella hesitates a minute before deciding.

“Okay, let’s talk.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't have CF or know anyone with. I did google research on whether they can hug people without CF and google said yes, so that's what i went with. Please let me know if I'm wrong.


End file.
